The number of mobile cellular telecommunications stations has increased dramatically recently, with a resulting increase in call blockage because all radio channels linking a mobile station and a cell site are allocated to other calls. Blockage increases during peak busy hours and during major events affecting the service region (such as political/governmental events, fires and natural disasters). Blockage of cellular call attempts due to unavailable radio channels leads to two consequences which further tax the cellular system.
When a mobile station attempts to place a call, the cellular system determines the best serving cell based on the mobile station's location within the system. If cellular telephone traffic is such that all of the radio channels in the best serving cell are fully allocated to other calls, then the cellular system attempts to serve the mobile station with a radio channel from the next best serving cell. If a call is established by the next best serving cell and the mobile station does not move into that cell, then the cellular system immediately begins to attempt to hand off the call to the best serving cell, and continues to do so at five or ten second intervals until a handoff is made or the call disconnects. Successive attempts to hand off calls cause system congestion in the originally congested cell, resulting in further degradation of service.
If none of the cells can service the mobile station's call request, then the mobile station receives a "reorder" signal. In response to a recorder signal, most users press the "end" button and then immediately press the "send" button, and continue doing so until the call is completed. Since calls are served on a first-come, first-serve basis, the mobile station must be the first one to request a radio channel after it becomes available. Some mobile station manufacturers have incorporated a feature into mobile station sets that automatically performs the end-send functions until the call is completed. This "end-send syndrome" causes additional load on an already heavily loaded system because the cellular system must respond to requests for service and attempts to allocate resources.
An additional difficulty in the area of wireless communication is that a mobile station is, by its nature, capable of moving around in the wireless communication system during call set up. If there is a significant delay between the time a call is placed and the time the call is completed, the mobile station may have moved, and the channel allocated for the call may no longer be for the best serving cell. Therefore, radio channel allocation in wireless communication systems is further complicated because the mobile stations can move between the time the call request is made and the time that a radio channel becomes available.
A problem in the art, therefore, is the degradation of service that results in known wireless telecommunication systems when call requests are made repetitively during unavailability of call path resources, e.g., radio channels or voice trunks, in an attempt to be the first requester after a call path resource becomes available.